Even though much progress has been made in recent years, the cost of advanced communication services continues to deter the adoption of these services by subscribers, particularly with regard to wireless communication services conveyed by cellular telephone systems.
History teaches that advertising has the potential to support a significant share of the cost of communications. In the past, broadcast network television, for example, has been financed entirely through advertising, and has been provided free of charge to consumers throughout the United States. More recently, substantial activities based on the Internet and World Wide Web have been financed through advertising, for example through the use of banners, pop-ups, and the like. Unfortunately, these kinds of advertisements are generally impersonal, and therefore less than fully effective in reaching consumers.
Although personalized advertisements may be expected to be more effective than impersonal advertisements, and so to provide more revenue, a major impediment to personalizing advertisements is the concern for maintaining privacy. Based on their Internet experiences, many consumers are reluctant to allow advertisers to use personal information. This is because consumers are afraid that such information will be abused without any regard for their privacy, leading to a torrent of unwanted “spam,” fraudulent billings, and so forth. This fear may be especially acute in the field of wireless communication, where the consumer, who may be a subscriber to a cellular telephone service, typically uses a miniature communication terminal that has a small visual display and a reduced-function keyboard, which together make the task of sorting through and disposing of unwanted messages especially inconvenient.
Thus there is a need for a convenient way of safeguarding consumers' privacy so that revenue derived from personalized advertising may be used to offset some of the cost of advanced telecommunication services, especially in the field of wireless communications.